Iraq army begins offensive to retake northern city of Mosul

Iraqi army troops, with the help of allied forces, have launched a military offensive to oust the Islamic State group from the northern city of Mosul, the Iraqi prime minister said on Monday.

Haider al-Abadi, flanked by top military commanders, addressed the nation on Iraqi television to inform the country that he had ordered the start of the offensive.

"We started fighting IS in the outskirts of Baghdad, and thank God we are now fighting them in the outskirts of Mosul, and God willing the decisive battle will be soon," al-Abadi said.

The military operation to retake Mosul in the northern Niniveh province, which has been under IS control since June 2014, had been planned for months.

The governor of Niniveh province Nofal Hammadi said that the Mosul offensive would be a fatal blow to the IS.

In a televised speech he called upon al-Abadi to protect the civilians of Mosul during the long-awaited military operation and asked the inhabitants of Niniveh to cooperate fully with troops advancing through the outlaying towns and villages.

Addressing his international support, he asked the United States-led military coalition to ensure precision when conducting airstrikes against the IS in the city to avoid civilian casualties.

The US, which has been providing aerial support to various local fighting factions in both Iraq and Syria since 2014, welcomed the onset of the Mosul offensive.

In a statement issued shortly after al-Abadi's official announcement, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the US and the rest of the international coalition stood ready to support the Iraqi Security Forces, Peshmerga fighters and the people of Iraq.

Thousands of soldiers representing different religious and ethnic communities across Iraq were reported to be gathering in tactical towns and cities on the periphery of Mosul.

Providing support to the central Iraqi Army offensive are the Shiite-led Popular Mobilization Forces, Kurdish Peshmerga, Sunni-majority Arab tribal coalitions and the international air support coalition, among others.

Tens of thousands of leaflets were dropped over the city before the operation to warn citizens that the start of the armed offensive was imminent.

The number of people who remain in Mosul, the second largest city in the country, is unknown, but there were two million citizens living there when the IS took control.

It was in this city that IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a "caliphate" of the territory controlled by this group in Iraq and Syria.

In recent months the IS have lost swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, with various international and internationally-backed military groups pushing against their territory on all fronts.

On Sunday, Turkish-backed rebels in Syria regained control of the symbolically important town of Dabiq from the IS, less than 24 hours after launching an offensive.

Source: EFE